Grig suck

[kumquatelvis]

Um..does anyone ever turn their adventurers into anything other than mages anymore?

 

[Ecofarm]

Combat 5 or twincast doesn't really matter when you can have 5 more mages for cheap.

I make them assassins, to go with regular fireball mages; pretty lame...

Perhaps I can upgrade CR3 melee to paladins or eids? That (like vamps) is not bad.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I still think that Air Elementals are usually a batter choice, since you then get free lightning elementals too.

I do think that summons could be improved though. I'm thinking Treants and Earth Elementals should have siege abilities, Fire Elementals should explode in combat and maybe create flames features, Water Elementals should be able to carry DOMAIN_SEA units across land, Djinni should be arcane units that start with some mage spells of their own, Balors need fire and entropy affinity and maybe magic in those spheres, Einherjar should have Spirit Guide (they already stick around and can gather and use xp, but eventually lose it), etc.

 

[jwin]

Am I the only one who uses the chaos or law 3 summons that stay whenever they win? With twincast and them, along with a mage or two to maelstrom, you get a constantly growing army. Even if you lose one or two to particularly powerful opponenets, you will still have plenty more coming. Of course, it is still cannon fodder, but good cannon fodder.

 

[gibbon_malus]

I lost a favorite civ, with .31

Sure there was meteor, the ultimate display of total pwnership. No more great library in industrial -> charismatic.

But I also enjoyed the sublty of shadows. Sure, you had to beeline esus because failing to found was game over; however, it was a nice complex use of grigs.

Now, there is nothing. Twin cast fireballs?! Instead of just having 2 cheap mages (4-5 are sufficient anyway)? Assassins instead of shadows?

Name one thing to use an adventurer for that doesn't suck.

There is no point in using them for units that are a dime a dozen, just use two of those instead.

Effective translation: "Waaa! Waaa! They took away my ridiculously overpowered meteor spell! They took away the religious unit I wasn't supposed to have!"

Seriously, the grigori DO NOT suck. They still have the best mages in the game (twincast and hero promotion for lots of xp). The mage path still gives them Luonontar. And, in addition to having a those great end-game units, the grigori are still the best rushers in the game.

At the end of the day, theres still no civ who stands a chance against a Combat V, Heroic Strength II, Shock II warrior (with proper backup).

So yeah, let me see... strongest early game military, check. Most flexible gameplay (can choose traits, adventurers upgrade to any unit, versatile worldspell), check. Strongest and quickest archmages in the game, check.

And did I mention you can now get the (previously unavailable) heal spell? Oh, and not only do you get it, you get it early (at medicine) and on a unit with no cap?

Why are you complaining again?

 

[Calbrenar]

The rest of your rant on fodder is irrelevant.

[translation]
"Xienwolf I have absolutely no way to counter what you're saying because I'm prating like a jackass."
[/translation]

 

[Vehem]

The rest of your rant on fodder is irrelevant. I don't want any.

I'm going to repeat this bit of Xien's post as it's exactly right. The Grigori don't get one special hero. They get ~6 (or more) *lesser* heros. They are lesser. They are not as good. There are many of them to make up for it. That is how it is supposed to work.

If I recall before your problem with them was that you played multiplayer with a very specific set of additional rules in place which meant that they had potential to dominate. It now sounds as if you've become used to using that fact and play Grigori yourself.

If you feel that they're "teh sux0r" now, don't play as them. I'm sure there's another race that can "pwn all". As the number of different people replying on the matter has highlighted, most of us still feel that they're a powerful civilization - not in an earthshattering, all conquering way, but a solid, dependable civ that can be played many different ways successfully. Personally I always liked an early combat5 shock2 axeman force, upgrading to Champions/Immortals later. The option was never as strong on paper as the Archmages, but it worked fine. It still works fine.

Oh - and nice one Calbrenar

 

[Blackmantle]

What about waiting and seeing what the system will be like when initial testing is done and all spheres are at least implemented for a start before criticizing / comparing something that hasn't been fully done?

The complete overhaul has just been done a very short time ago.
To compare the new system at that stage with a fully and lengthily fleshed out and more or less tested system yields forseeable results. The new system can't stand up to the old one (yet ).
If thats not to your liking play the last version that works for you and your MP partners and wait a few weeks / months until the new system is at least a bit tested and fleshed out. And then judge on at least some kind of comparable basis.

But best whould be if you whould still playtest it in spite of not liking it and provide constructive feedback like you did more or less on Maelstrom. (which im sure you will. )



At the no honor / deception for Grigori im with the Op that i dont so any reason for blocking it for the Grigori whatsoever. Especially since the Council voting mechanism has been changed to negate the negative effects of the Grigori founding them.
But since it wasn't written explicitly in the changelog i don't see this one as an intentional change yet. Could have missed something though.

The current spreading mechanism for Esus is broken to root anyways and should be changed instead of other things tweaked around a completely broken concept. (remember all the religious techs beeing changed to giving a free desciple. That was done for a reason. And i think few will argue it was a bad change whatsoever. Basically everyone gets an "Esus desciple" / Nightwatch from Deception as well allready.
But im sure not just for windowdressing [pun intended ] as it is now.)

And there also is no reason for Esus not opperating at Grigori soil flavorwise if one thinks it trough a bit. I doubt all the Esus units operate at the say / notice of its nations leader. So if anything they ought to be harder to contain not easier.
Grigori cant really get any substantial of the benefits of Esus religion anyways (the nice Esus spells won't work without having it as state or am i wrong and this has changed?) so whats the point of the block in the first place? (besides a mistake of course which i think is more likely the reason.)
That after all reduces the chance for the councils acting in the game which is not a good thing at all imo.

I yery much doubt barring the grigori from entering the councils and defensive pacts whould be intentional. After all thats a place for mortal (or not so much mortal ) leaders of erebus to handle the worlds affairs not the gods. So all in line with Cassiels thinking i reckon.
That i whould consider the far worse handicap gameplaywise / funwise (i doubt anyone will argue that mages have been weakend, albeit for a reason + that priests have been improved quite considerably. Both of which hurts the relative strength of the Grigori allready. Although i whouldn't agree on Ecofams assessment of the overall power of the Grigori now.)

 

[Sarisin]

I enjoyed reading your explanation Blackmantle.

I was surprised and disappointed in my first game with the Grigori when I couldn't research Deception or Honor. I thought, no problem, there must be some other way I can build Shadows later on. Uh, no.

I looked in the changelog/patch description and didn't see anything.

I really liked the strategy of building Shadows in the later game and it is a shame I cannot do that now with the Grigori. I agree that maybe just researching Guilds should be enough.

Not being able to research Honor is not as much a problem because I don't think you lose much - not having Empyrean religion means nothing to the Grigori, and it does have a chance of spreading anyway (not like CofE). I think you can still initiate Defensive Pacts, but I am not sure.

One other thing that is missing from the Grigori now is the ability to build that very powerful hero, The Trojan Horse. Well, you can have some fun with that, but no Deception - no Trojan Horse.

I haven't played the Grigori enough yet, though, to say whether I prefer the Adventurer heroes over the National/Religious heroes. I am very glad the Grigori can still build the Baron though. Please don't take him away next.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Effective translation: "Waaa! Waaa! They took away my ridiculously overpowered meteor spell! They took away the religious unit I wasn't supposed to have!"

[translation]
"Xienwolf I have absolutely no way to counter what you're saying because I'm prating like a jackass."
[/translation]

Originally Posted by Ecofarm
The rest of your rant on fodder is irrelevant. I don't want any.

I'm going to repeat this bit of Xien's post as it's exactly right. The Grigori don't get one special hero. They get ~6 (or more) *lesser* heros. They are lesser. They are not as good. There are many of them to make up for it. That is how it is supposed to work.

If I recall before your problem with them was that you played multiplayer with a very specific set of additional rules in place which meant that they had potential to dominate. It now sounds as if you've become used to using that fact and play Grigori yourself.

If you feel that they're "teh sux0r" now, don't play as them. I'm sure there's another race that can "pwn all". As the number of different people replying on the matter has highlighted, most of us still feel that they're a powerful civilization - not in an earthshattering, all conquering way, but a solid, dependable civ that can be played many different ways successfully. Personally I always liked an early combat5 shock2 axeman force, upgrading to Champions/Immortals later. The option was never as strong on paper as the Archmages, but it worked fine. It still works fine.

Oh - and nice one Calbrenar

i agree entirely with the above

 

[Fenboy]

I was surprised and disappointed in my first game with the Grigori when I couldn't research Deception or Honor. I thought, no problem, there must be some other way I can build Shadows later on. Uh, no.

I looked in the changelog/patch description and didn't see anything.

I really liked the strategy of building Shadows in the later game and it is a shame I cannot do that now with the Grigori. I agree that maybe just researching Guilds should be enough.

I ran a test on this back in 0.30k, I put Council of Esus religion in a Grigori city and gave them Guilds in the worldbuilder. Shadows were available to train. So you can have Shadows as Grigori, you just have to get an Esus player to spread it to your city

 

[Mailbox]

Strangely enough, it always seems like Esus spreads fast in Grigori and Illian cities whenever I found it as another civilization.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

People defending the Grigori in this topic don't seem to get how much more powerful FfH religions are than normal Civ4 ones, and what a big drawback it is to not be able to have any of them, not to mention the usefulness of regular great people and regular heroes. To make up for missing ALL THREE of those things, the Grigori needed uber adventurers to be balanced. They still somewhat have them early on in the form of melee adventurers, but while it's a good earlygame advantage it's not the greatest, and later on they just fall apart.

 

[Calbrenar]

Every time i've played grigori I've typically killed off one possibly two civs nearby both preventing the need for an extra 1 or 2 settlers and giving me access to the better cap starting resources.

Even as Jonas I've had problems pulling this off and if they start on a mountain its basically impossible. As Grigori you easily get access to 2 or 3 Shock Combat (sometimes Raider depending on how you research) heroes that can use metal weapons and can demolish any other civ's starting forces. If you go recon and animal husbandry you can get armies of animals.

I fail to see how considering the game is near exponential as far as researching and building goes the enormous advantage the grigori get early game does not translate to an enormous advantage later on.

Unless you found a holy city not all of the religions are that fantastic and even with the holy city in many cases an aggressively played early grigori civ can end up grabbing other nice cash generating caps faster then most religions holy shrines spread any kind of serious cash and you don't need to drop a gp for it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I personally think that Uber units aren't the area where the lack of religion hurts the Grigori so much as happiness and culture. Thats why I added a "Local Ledgend" Great Specialist that adventurers can join a city as. It grants +1 xp to all units built in the city, +2 Adventurer GPP, and +3 culture. (I was planning to make it give +1 too, but there isn't a tag for that.)

I'm thinking I may change the way they are added to work through a spell instead (borrowing from the Golden Hammer code), so any Grigori Hero can join a city instead of just unupgraded adventurers.

Or, I might just give Grigori heroes a spell that turns them back to adventurers (similar to wane). That would mean your adventurers could switch to a different unitcombat and get different promotions if you want. Hmm..that might be overpowered, as you could get an archmage adventurer with lots of spells spheres to switch to a physically stronger unit that retains all its abilities but doesn't take up a national unit slot. War Chariots with Blitz, Mobility 1+2, Heroic Strength/Defense 1+2, Mithril Weapons, Subdue Animal, Subdue Beasts, Twincast, and the ability to cast all archmage spells could be almost unstoppable. If you don't care about losing a little movement, you can make it an Archmage/Beastmaster/Immortal instead.

That is probably very unbalanced, but I think I like it. I think it makes sense for adventurers to return home to a peaceful life, and then decide to embark on a completely different adventure as a different type of unit, while retaining the skill developed earlier. This is much more interesting than the simple "summon 6 meteors every turn (or 12 every other turn)" so called strategy.

 

[Wyrmhero]

You say the Grigori aren't powerful because they don't have meteors. I just won a Tower of Mastery victory because of my four immortal adventurers, and no mages/archmages. And, meteors weren't even a grigori spell. You could have used anyone to get them. The only difference was that you got a second set. However, IMHO, this really decreases your ability to react later on in game anyway. I would rather have archmages that can do several things, than waste six more promotions to get them to cast six meteors instead of three.

 

[Mewtarthio]

How do you get Immortals as Grigori? Eyes and Ears Network? Lots and lots of tech trading?

 

[Wyrmhero]

Well, I was playing with just the Tower of Mastery victory on, and I did a lot of tech trading. I was lucky enough to have a nice start. Turn 20, I got an Adventurer, then I wiped out the Malakim, and took their captial, with lots of commerce-generating resources, such as Dye and Silk. I was playing a very long game.

 

[Sarisin]

Every time i've played grigori I've typically killed off one possibly two civs nearby both preventing the need for an extra 1 or 2 settlers and giving me access to the better cap starting resources.

Even as Jonas I've had problems pulling this off and if they start on a mountain its basically impossible. As Grigori you easily get access to 2 or 3 Shock Combat (sometimes Raider depending on how you research) heroes that can use metal weapons and can demolish any other civ's starting forces. If you go recon and animal husbandry you can get armies of animals.

I fail to see how considering the game is near exponential as far as researching and building goes the enormous advantage the grigori get early game does not translate to an enormous advantage later on.

Unless you found a holy city not all of the religions are that fantastic and even with the holy city in many cases an aggressively played early grigori civ can end up grabbing other nice cash generating caps faster then most religions holy shrines spread any kind of serious cash and you don't need to drop a gp for it.

Excellent post, Calbrenar!

I follow the same strategy to use my first two Adventurer heroes as a Warrior/Axeman and a Hunter. Supported by a lesser Warrior, the early hero is unstoppable. Most AI cities are defended by one Warrior with no promotions. If you play with the Barbarian World option, it is fairly easy to get your second city without building a Settler...or just declare war on your neighbor. I also have been lucky to have Orthus spawn near me on several occasions and he is dead meat for the Adventurer hero.

I was able to use the Hunter hero to get all the animals and build the elusive Grand Menagerie.

So, you are right in that the Grigori can be an early-game juggernaut.

However, later game, I do miss being able to build the Shadows. As the ai pacts up, it is difficult to declare war sometimes, so I like to use the Shadows to go in and at least make the game interesting.

Yes, the happy cap is a problem for the Grigori with no religions. I have to admit cheating a bit on my starting position by making sure there are at least 2 resources that will bring happiness (or grains and the city is on a river). Then, as I said, I try to get as many animals as I can, and, hopefully that Menagerie.

In my last game I was very lucky and got Iron Working very early from a Graveyard robbing. I was able to build Dragon Slayers by turn 50 in an Epic speed game. Of course, upgrading my Adventurer heroes to Dragon Slayers was too expensive, and there wasn't an Axeman option as the unit was obsoleted. However, I was able to more than hold my own against the raging barbs when they came and had a pretty powerful army augmented by the Stooges.

 

[Ecofarm]

Girg is not my fav civ. It was (and I should stress was) one of the civs I enjoyed playing in my hundreds of games. There are a few I like more. Those of you who think I am crying because I need meteors lack perspective. I was a leading complainer in how overpowered grig archmages were. I have no delusions regarding the game breaking balance problem that was.

Anyway, there is no "waaaaah". Don't anyone call a waaambulance.

Grig sucks.

If you want to warrior rush, go play bts inca.

---

To the guy who would rather have something else than another 3 meteors:

don't be such a noob

Eighteen collateral nines

18, 9str, collateral

Spoiler :

18